do YOU knit your own shoes?

But first, super congratulations to Yahaira! She launched her yarn store this week, and it's beautiful. Great job! Hey why is the green bamboo colorway named Illanna? Heh. Back to the shoes.



Warning: If you are from the "How dare you felt Manos?" school of thought, you should scroll down QUICKLY. I don't want to offend people who don't felt with hand-dyed yarns, especially since I triple stranded it too.

The pattern comes from Funky Knits, or Funkyzeit mit Bruno as I like to call it. The original pattern called for 2 skeins of Rowan Big Wool, but I didn't have that on hand. What I DID have was 4 skeins of Manos del Uruguay, in the Gasoline colorway, from last year's Flying Fingers sale.



The pattern was super easy, but the construction of these shoes is SO weird. Until I finished one entire shoe, I had no idea how the whole thing would come together. The part that really threw me off was that there is a seam on the center bottom of the sole. It seems like an unlikely spot to put a seam, because I have to step on it. Once felted, though, the seam doesn't bother me at all. Next time I'm going to try to make a flatter seam anyway.



The best part was felting these bad boys to fit. I just kept running them through the scrub-a-dub until they fit on my feet. Then I wore them so they would dry to my own shape.

I already have my next pair planned: Ruby Slippers. I'm going to hold together a strand of Louisa Harding Shingle, (in color number 4 Bordeaux) with 2 strands of Lamb's Pride Bulky. I'll only hold together the sequins at the top part, and then I'll probably only need one ball.

I started a pair of Jaywalkers... my first pair ever!



The yarn is Austermann Step, the yarn with Jojoba Oil and Aloe. It really does make the yarn softer, and the colors are so wild and fun. I love the way it knits up, with little red dots throughout all the stripes.



The colors really look like springtime in the desert to me, especially in that picture above.

When I'm running around in circles trying to decide what to make out of my Noro Silver Thaw, remind me of this post. After seeing this self striped Picovoli, I became totally inspired to make a Noro T-Shirt. I'm trying hard to use yarn from my stash lately, because then I won't feel so bad when I buy more! See how that works? Anyway, the Noro in my stash consists of: 2 balls of Kureyon (220 yds total) and 2 balls of Silver Thaw (440 yds total). The Silver Thaw won in the yardage and softness category, but it lost in the 5.5 stitches per inch category.

So, I've decided to change around the Picovoli pattern, to match the 4 stitches per inch of the Silver Thaw. I'm going to use Mesilla as a guide, but I want the neckline to be more like Picovoli. I'm going to try to make sure that I don't end up having to pick up a bunch of stitches around the neck, because when I bind off, I want to immediately put it on! That's my plan.

I'll end with a meme that I saw on Cara's blog:

Do a Wikipedia search of your birthdate, minus the year; list three interesting events, three people who were born, and three people who died on that day.

Events:
1903 - Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series.
1908 - Ford introduces the Model T car.
1975 - The Ellice Islands split from Gilbert Islands and take the name Tuvalu. (see that Steve?)

Births:
1207 - King Henry III of England (d. 1272)
1945 - Rod Carew, Panamanian Major League Baseball player (he converted!)
1992 - Tyler James Williams, Child actor from the hit tv show Everybody Hates Chris. (hit tv show? really?)

Deaths:
1040 - Alan III, Duke of Brittany (poisoned) (b. 997)
1876 - James Lick, California land baron (b. 1796)
1985 - E. B. White, American author (b. 1899)

posted by illanna at 6:14 PM |